'Sudden and Unexpected' Cardiac Arrests are up 20% since 2019, Norwegian Data Shows

All the while legacy media and the medical community are hard at-work obfuscating the issue and gaslighting the public--nothing new under the midnight sun

Another day, another ‘baffling™’ piece of evidence, this time, renowned self-identifying as ‘cantankerous and intrepid journo™’ Erik Wilthil of NRK reveals his foray into ‘sudden and unexpected cardiac arrest’—that’s actually his wording, not mine (orig. plutselig og uventet hjertestans).

If I could still be surprised, I probably would. Alas, I can’t. Reading these pieces is so mind-numbing in 2024.

Lest you are incensed about my consideration of Mr. Wilthil, well, I’d go for it’s well-deserved: he’s about the only one at NRK who every now and then writes about Covid poison/death juice issues, but it’s not much more—if it is that—than a very limited hangout. See, e.g., this one:

'I've never seen anything like this': Excess Mortality Among Young People in Norway

Anyways, I’ll have a bit more to say in the bottom lines; until then, note that this is my translation, with emphases [and snark] added.

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Cardiac Arrest: More People Get Help, But Just as Many Die

Thousands of defibrillators and increasingly skilled first responders have not led to increased survival.

By Jan-Erik Wilthil, NRK, 18 Oct. 2024 [source]

‘They're already dead, but we know that we can make a difference here. We know that someone can survive if you do the right things’, says paramedic Birgitte Larsen.

When a heart suddenly stops beating, she and her colleagues at the Drammen ambulance service know what is at stake. ‘Most of the time the outcome is tragic, but sometimes a person is brought back to life’, Larsen says, adding:

It always does something to us when we get it right. Most of the time we don’t. It's the times when things go well that keep us going in the hope that things will turn around.

Every year, around 4,000 Norwegians suffer from the dreaded condition of cardiac arrest. Most cases occur outside hospital, and fast help is crucial to saving lives.

Without cardiopulmonary resuscitation, death is almost inevitable. For every minute that passes, the chance of survival is reduced by 10%.

Increase in Reported Cardiac Arrests

The last two years have seen a record number of resuscitation attempts after cardiac arrest [are you baffled yet?].

But despite the fact that more people were helped quickly, there are still very few who escape with their lives [I suppose you expected numbers or data, which Mr. Wilthil, intrepid as he might feel he is, never provides; not even a link to the pertinent annual reports of the Norwegian Cardiac Arrest Register, or Norsk hjertestansregister].

Last year, paramedics initiated resuscitation on 3,036 people with cardiac arrest. Only 439 of these survived [see how the agit-prop works? Mr. Wilthil leads with a header and introduces a ‘record number’ while omitting the underlying data, hence the following ‘quote’, which is mine, which adds the numbers].

Info Box by epimetheus (not in the piece)

In 2019, there were 3,715 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) reports, which translates into an ‘incidence’ (sic) of 70 per 100,000 inhabitants. There were also 1,002 in-hospital reports from 919 patients. The total was 4,717 cardiac arrest reports (baseline for the following year-on-year changes).

2020: 4,213 OHCA reports (+13.5% YoY), or 78 per 100,000; there were 953 in-hospital reports from 906 patients. The total was 5,166 cardiac arrest reports (+9.5% YoY).

2021: 4,639 OCHA reports (+10% YoY), or 86 per 100,000; there were 1,107 in-hospital reports from 1,016 patients. The total was 5,746 cardiac arrest reports (+11.2% YoY).

2022: 3,862 OCHA reports, or 71 per 100,000; there were 1,340 in-hospital reports from 1,235 patients. The total was 5,202 cardiac arrest reports (-9.5% YoY).

2023: 4,438 OCHA reports (no more ‘incidence’ provided); there were 1,231 in-hospital reports from 1,108 patients. The total was 5,669 cardiac arrest reports (+9% YoY—or +20% higher than 2019).

By way of a disclaimer, do note that the Norwegian Cardiac Arrest Register commenced in 2013 and that reporting was notoriously low for the first couple of years. From 2016 onwards, data from first responders is virtually complete; from 2019 onwards, almost all hospitals are reporting data; since 2021, the report also includes data from most ‘911 calls’ (Norway uses a different number). Put differently, the above numbers are pretty solid. With that being said, back to Mr. Wilthil’s puff piece.

‘The number of survivors per 100,000 inhabitants is completely stable in Norway. Unfortunately, there has been no change over the past ten years’, says Ingvild Tjelmeland, head of the Norwegian Cardiac Arrest Register [and thus works the agit-prop: since Mr. Wilthil elected to omit the drastic increase of cardiac arrests (+20% compared to 2019) and focuses on this notion, the reader is none the wiser]

She believes that the transition to a new digital system may have contributed to more cardiac arrests being registered [I’ve mentioned this in the info box; there is ‘some’ truth to this, but since the reporting from first responders (the overwhelming majority of such reports) has been in these data sets since 2016, this is a grossly misleading ‘belief’].

‘Something happened when we went from paper to electronic. Over the past two years, we have seen an increase in the number of reported cardiac arrests [please look at the data, Ms. Ingvild Tjelmeland, who is in charge of the cardiac arrest register: don’t you think that by pointing to essentially ‘the same number of survivors’ despite massively increased reporting should tell you, well, something that’s going on here?]

[NRK’s Wilthil] ‘These statistics only show those who are attempted to be resuscitated by paramedics [wrong; the data is quite granular, as my brief break-down shows, the register differentiates between OCHA and in-hospital cardiac arrests]. Does this mean that the actual number of cardiac arrests could be even higher?’ [Mr. Wilthil either didn’t look at the reports or elected to ask a stupid question]

[Tjelmeland] ‘Yes, but not everyone who dies should be attempted to be resuscitated [yep, that’s what ‘don’t resuscitate orders’ are for; I honestly haven’t checked if that category is included in the reports]. Some people are allowed to die at home from advanced cancer [who decides that?]. Others have injuries or extensive medical histories that make it incompatible with life. They should not be resuscitated. It’s simply not ethically right [and you, Ms. Tjelmeland, or any other first responder or MD is permitted to make that call on the spot?]

Facts About Cardiac Arrest [this is an info box provided by NRK]:

• Sudden and unexpected [sic, orig. plutselig og uventet] out-of-hospital cardiac arrest affects around 3,000 people in Norway every year [again, look at the numbers in my box: this is grossly misleading; it’s around 4,000, plus here it should also mention the in-hospital cardiac events].

• Two out of three cases happen at home [same here: the registered data is quite clear that OCHA events are more like 20-25% of the total].

• Anyone can have a cardiac arrest, but the condition is more common in men and people over the age of 65.

• The most common cause of cardiac arrest is arrhythmia in connection with an acute heart attack [which, of course, has nothing-at-all to do with, say, lifestyle choices or the modRNA poison/death jabs].

• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the use of a defibrillator are crucial to the patient's survival.

• Only 10-15% of those who are resuscitated survive cardiac arrest.

We Haven’t Cracked the Code

In 2017, then-Minister of Health, Bent Høie, launched a national initiative to improve knowledge of life-saving first aid. The aim was to save 200 more lives a year.

The background to the initiative was experience from Denmark, among other countries, which has worked systematically to improve knowledge of life-saving first aid.

So far, Norway is far from reaching the target.

At the same time, defibrillators have been popping up like mushrooms all over the country. So far, 10,500 defibrillators have been registered, but it is estimated that the actual number may be as high as 80,000.

Even that has not translated into better survival rates [what’s the price per defibrillator unit and who pays for them?]

‘We have focussed on this. We have a defibrillator register and a cardiac arrest register. However, it doesn’t look like we’ve quite cracked the code on what we can do to significantly increase survival’, says Tjelmeland.

Norwegians at the Top of the World

Even if the survival rate does not increase, there are many examples of rapid first aid and the use of defibrillators saving lives.

‘The earlier patients receive a shock or good CPR, the more likely they are to survive’, says Tjelmeland. And Norwegians are among the best in class at intervening when someone keels over [how reassuring, eh?], adding:

We are at the top of the world when it comes to performing CPR before the ambulance arrives. And we’ve been at the top of the league for many years. But we still have some way to go, and it still increases slightly from year to year [I don’t know about you, but the data from the past five years doesn’t look ‘small’ to me…]

She believes more lives can be saved if more people use defibrillators [or exercised more, ate better food, and didn’t take the modRNA poison/death juice].

Almost 80% of all those who suffered cardiac arrest last year received cardiopulmonary resuscitation from people nearby. 40 people were shocked by a defibrillator and were alive when the ambulance arrived at the scene [remember that there may be as many as 80,000 such units in the country: a marvellously efficient thing, eh?].

‘That’s where I think there's the most to be gained. Under optimal conditions, when you have a defibrillator and the expertise on site, the survival rate increases quite dramatically,’ says Tjelmeland [we need more defibrillators, that’s the obvious conclusion—why not mandate everybody carrying one?].

Last year, 1,108 patients suffered cardiac arrest while hospitalised. Half of the patients regained their heartbeat and 32% survived [again, look at the data provided above: numbers without context are meaningless].

Paramedic Birgitte Larsen is hopeful that more can be saved in the future:

We train and train, and we know that we can always improve. We have a project underway to find out how we can get better at this. There’s a lot of research going on right now, so I really hope there will be more rescues in the future.

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Bottom Lines

I personally doubt that such piss-poorly researched—and written—pieces occur by accident. Mr. Wilthil is either incompetent or an evil man.

This late in the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’, the data is screaming at you, yet Mr. Wilthil fails to even come up with the most basic way of writing a decent article that provides information.

To be fair, the link to the National Cardiac Arrest Register was provided, which is where I found the above data, and I suppose there’s but one reason Mr. Wilthil didn’t provide these numbers, and you may as well weigh in on the incompetence vs. malice notion.

Personally, I think he’s both, although malice, or evil, appears clearly in the lead—for two reasons: one the one hand, the piece is sprinkled with ‘read also’ references (which may not be Mr. Wilthil’s doing, but I doubt he couldn’t at least comment on these links), including a piece from June 2020 about a heroic 14 year-old who performed CPR on the football (soccer) pitch on his best friend and somehow, assisted by 911 operator, managed to save his friend’s live. It’s a moving and honestly great piece, but there’s no indication about the cause of the cardiac arrest (that 14 year-old teen looked very healthy etc., and there’s no reference to any kind of illness or even Covid, and he now has a pacemaker). So I fear this piece is part and parcel of the drive to normalise the higher incidence of cardiac arrest.

On the other hand, the more recent (March 2023) piece about a 33 year-old who also suffered from a cardiac arrest while on the football (soccer) field is more…telling: the cardiac arrest came out of the blue sky, and, ‘despite the doctors looking very closely, they are none the wiser as to why I’ve suffered a cardiac arrest’, the 33 year-old Hans Olav adds. Even more patently absurd are the data points provided: ‘the average age of people suffering a cardiac arrest is 64, and only 11% of those who need CPR are under 35’.

I, for one, am quite sure that the appearance, some 11 or twelve days before that second piece went live in March 2023, of another article that claimed ‘a serious course of Covid increases the risk for heart disease’ may well have been the reason for that follow-up piece about Hans-Olav.

I don’t know.

What I do know, however, are that there is a noticeable increase of ‘sudden and unexpected’ cardiac arrests (+20% relative to 2019), that Mr. Wilthil omits quite a bit of crucial and relevant information, and that there has been a de facto campaign to normalise these kinds of events.

Needless to say, bafflement ensues, and the casual reader is none the wiser.

It’s all so sad, esp. as both ‘journos™’ and ‘experts™’ still don’t want to ask a few pertinent questions.

What a shit-show.